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Abstract

Kant’s solution of the relation between philosophy and natural sciences, as expressed in his „Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Naturwissenschaft“, particularly in the introductory part of this work, is being studied in the present paper. The influence is being analysed of the „pre-critical“ natural science works, in particular the influence of theory of knowledge and logic, on the formation of philosophical foundations of natural sciences. The main purpose and integrating point of Kant’s theory of knowledge and logic was to insure certainty of knowledge. In contrast to the naive objective thinking which identified thought with objective qualities of things which were becoming known, Kant shifted the core of the certainty entirely to subject. In it, in the particular character of the motion of thought, in thinking capacity, Kant looked for a guaranty from error, from self-directioned play with concepts in philosophy and from shallow empiricism in natural sciences. He deduced the inevitability of philosophy for natural science knowledge from the inevitability to penetrate into the regularity of the existence of things, which can be attained only by a sensitive, demanding, logically consistent work with concepts. Kant did not offer to natural scientists some assemblage of ready obligatory truths, but taught them to work with concepts, arrange concepts and findings into vertically as well as horizontally differentiated system. Kant’s philosophy differs by that from the speculative onesidedly ontological „naturphilosophy“ before him but also after him. And by that he approaches, at the same time, modern tendencies in solving philosophical questions of natural sciences. Therefore, Kant’s philosophy of natural sciences yields even in the contemporary relations a valuable inspirational source for the formation of nondogmatic, gnoseologically and methodologically efficient philosophical attitude toward natural sciences. Onesidedly gnoseological conception of the object of philosophy in Kant manifested itself in a not enirely clear definition of the difference between theoretical natural sciences and philosophy as well as of the nature of joint problems or adjacent areas between both the levels of knowledge.